• Leaders: Compassion #11
Leadership: Compassion #11
Compassion is a misunderstood word today. It seems that our culture defines compassion as doing good for those less fortunate, who are victims of fire, flood, earthquake, landslide, tsunami or some other uncontrollable event of nature. I am sure all this is involved with helping in cataclysmic need. But compassion is not always about big events, it is more personal than that.
When we look at the life of Jesus He was often moved with compassion on individuals whose condition was quite singular in nature, they had a specific problem. It was about the individual who was sick, poor, hungry, lonely, even the dead. Compassion involves love for others, but it is more than love. It involves caring for others. Love in action! It involves doing something about the human condition, whatever that is. However, I think it involves still more.
Compassion is deeper than concern, care or even acts of kindness.
• The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect, How your Life Matters (Book Review)
By Andy Andrews, published by Simple Truths, 2009, 109 pages, Thomas Nelson (an easy read, lots of photos too)
The Butterfly Effect is an unforgettable story about how our world is an incredible life of permanent purpose. It’s about how every move we make and every action we take, matters not just for us, but for all of us…for all time.
In 1963, Edward Lorenz made a presentation to the New York Academy of Sciences and was literally laughed out of the room.
• Visiting the Grand Kids
Visiting the Grand Kids
Looking at this photo reminds me of all the reasons I am enjoying being a grand father. Such life, such joy and such potential. You know when they tell me how much they love me, i believe them. Such love I have for them. I really want to be an engaged, a connected, and an involved grandpa. I have this opportunity to share with them my love for God and how He has been so faithful to me in my life and ministry. I have eight grand kids now, but these four live in Baltimore, MD. Although I cannot visit them as much as I would like, we are continuing to search out ways to get together as much as possible, even for short visits. My other four grand kids live in California and the youngest of those, i get to see on some regular basis, because they live close by us in La Mirada, CA
• A Stamp Collecting Legacy
Creating A Stamp Collecting Legacy
For me my interest in collecting stamps started when I was eight and has continued until now, almost sixty years. I have continued my interest over the year collecting and keeping my collection active, but in no means aggressive. At first I collected just United States Stamps and gradually expanded to the countries of the world. As the the years went by, i realized that keeping up with the countries of the world was a bigger job than I could really do justice to, so I began focusing on stamps with children on them. This made more sense to me. because of my interest in children’s ministry. However, in the last ten years I have become interested in collecting more stamps from the countries that I have actually traveled to in my ministry.
I made an effort to expose my own four children to the art of stamp collecting. They each had a stamp book and we would go to stamp conventions and special events where stamp dealers would go, just to expose them to the fun of collecting. We would even secure deals on stamps and stamp collecting supplies just to keep the hobby alive at home. As the years passed and they grew up, none of them continued to show interest in stamp collecting on their own. So I resigned myself that maybe my collection would be passed down to my grand children. So I have been waiting for them to get old enough. Of course, I think one has to have an aptitude for organization, learning about events, people, place and things to be interested in stamp collecting.
So this is what happened…
• What’s a Seagull Manager?
Seagull Manager
Seagull 〮Manager From Middle English gull, aquatic bird: and Italian maneggiare, to manage 1. A hasty boss who interacts with employees only to criticize or “fix” their work, of which he or she knows very little about. 2. The antithesis of a micromanager. Usage: Coined by leadership expert Ken Blanchard in his best selling book The One Minute Manager, the term refers to a manager who swoops in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everything, and then flies off, leaving employees to clean up the mess.
Example: “My seagull manager just trashed my desk and my project, even though upper management already signed off on it. What a mess!”
From Spirit Lexicon, Entry 511, Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine, May 2011, page 58
• Leaders: Weakness #10
Leadership: Weakness! (#10)
What images come to mind when you consider Weakness? Maybe weakness is just the opposite of strong or strength. Weakness might look like the lack of muscles, like feeble or the under developed weakling. Maybe you remember Mighty Mouse with super human qualities, but a diminutive form of a mouse? In our culture weakness is not to be emulated as a quality of leadership. No one wants to be a Weak Leader! So are we missing something here? I think so!
Weakness for Christian leader has more to do with humility and lack of arrogance, or pompus-proud behavior, grand standing, if you please. It is not childish, but more child like. It is not a kind of dependence on oneself, but rather an intentional dependence upon God. So how does this kind of weakness work in leadership?
First of all, I think weakness means everything is subject to the will of God. We believe God is sovereign and is in control of all things. We plan, but ultimately, we are subject to comply with God’s plans. We could say, “not my will, but thy will be done.”
Secondly, weakness means that we are totally dependent upon the blessing of Almighty God. We pray, not so much to tell God what to do, but humbly asking that we might accept what God will do. It is not about us trying to work it all out, but rather, it is about Him working in our lives to do His good pleasure through our leadership.
Further, weakness involves a resolve to obey God and do what He wants to accomplish through us. Leadership implies that God is instructing us, directing us, and guiding us in what we are doing in His Kingdom. If we lack this Kingdom orientation, then being strong in this World’s orientation is our only other option. Listening to God and obeying God is a much higher calling.
Lastly, I would say, weakness in leadership is NOT really about YOU. We represent another leader—Jesus. Ultimately, our leadership is not about us. He has chosen us and called us to be a leader. He leads us. We follow His lead. HE is the leader! Being submissive and subject to Him is clearly involved with weakness of leadership.
Here are My Top-Ten Tips for working Weakness in your Leadership Profile.
• Leaders: Accommodate #9
Leaders: Accommodate (or Chameleon Leadership) #9
This might sound like a strange way to talk about leadership—referencing a Chameleon. Just as chameleons change their skin color in response to light and ambient temperature, children’s ministers must also change their leadership styles in response to leadership styles around them. This is not a statement about being a “turn-coat” leader, it is rather about accommodating your leadership style to fit or work best with those leadership styles around you. For example, how about a woman CP who works with an all male staff? How about a process-oriented person working with a result-oriented person?
One of the most difficult areas of leadership is how to altar your leadership style to accommodate the leadership style of others. There is great advantage to this “chameleon-like” adjustment. Frankly, the truth is the better I understood my own style, and the style of leaders I worked with, the easier it was for me to adjust my style to accommodate their leadership style.
I took some course work while receiving Church Growth Consultant training. There I was given a number of tests. This was a real-eye opener for me. For the first time I had names for my own leadership issues and those leaders that I wanted to serve. So I began seeing the value of testing, it was personal at first, then it become more corporate. I was becoming aware of just how useful testing could be for my ongoing ministry. This is one of the reasons I use testing devices in my Kidology Coaching Program.
This is admittedly hard work and does not happen over night, but if you take these ideas seriously, it could move your leadership to a whole new level.
Here are my My Ten Tips to help you work on Leadership Accommodation…
• Really Know Your Child
Give Away Resources (for current on-line Kidology Protege’s only, (sorry)
From my exhaustive collection of the resource materials, I am hereby going to donate, to my students only, a collection of books on various aspects of children’s ministry.
The next one is How to Really Know Your Child published by Victor Books (155 pages, hardback in good condition) This classic work by Dr. Ross Campbell, a child psychiatrist, written for helps a parents understand the personality of their children. Dr. Campbell maintains that this is one of the most significant things a parent can do make it possible for their children develop into s strong Christian adult. I strongly recommend this book as a resource for your family ministries. An easy read and written for lay parents who want some help.
So how can you get this book? Here’s the fine print, so you can get your copy:
• My Love Affair with Books
My Love Affair With Books
The warm embrace of a really good book is what I long for now—a kind of closeness that envelops you. Granted, not all books treat you with this kind of intimacy, but you know it when it does.
For me, books did not hold this esteemed place in my childhood and youth. I had few books growing up. By third grade, I had lived in five states and the island of Guam. I struggled with reading—being timid about reading aloud in a reading group or in front of the class. I was slow, with an awkward rhythmic, but halting manner, as I phonically tried to sound out the words. I was way too self-conscious and often embarrassed. It was not my favorite thing to do.
I seemed to do OK in school, but my late start with reading changed in my senior year of High School, when God began dealing with me about the ministry. Somehow, I reasoned that study and reading would be part of the plan. At Moody Bible Institute I became a reader and started collecting books for my “would-be” minister’s library, not knowing where I would end up. Only “required” reading was included in the next eleven years and five schools. I accumulated a fairly representative clergy library, old and new, academic and reference works, biographies, commentaries, and language study helps, many of which, I had never even read. My passion was to collect good books and fill my shelves.
However, my “love affair” with books has been more recent, just the last few years, when…
• Dancing With Porcupines
Give Away Resources (for current on-line Kidology Protege’s only, (sorry)
From my exhaustive collection of the resource materials, I am hereby going to donate, to my current students only, a collection of books on various aspects of children’s ministry.
The next one is The Delicate Art of Dancing with Porcupines published by Regal Books, Division of Gospel Light (174 pages, paperback in good condition) This classic work by Bob Phillips helps a leader learn to appreciate the finer points of working with others. The charts and orientation of this book provides sufficient help to assess your own issues in your own leadership style. In addition it provides significant help for you to assess the leadership styles of those who work with you. It also provides orientation to several other testing devices and compares them to that you have a ready reference. This book is a must for those who want some help on what to look for to recruit the right people for the right positions. Also it provides help on how to delegate jobs to the right persons. I know of no other condensed work that is this handy and comprehensive about your leadership style and others too. I strongly recommend this book.
So how can you get this book? Here’s the fine print, so you can get your copy:
